Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob was giddy as I’ve ever seen him late last night (if you don’t count in-game sideline antics)–and he had a right to be.

He had a blast during this draft, riding the wave of buying the 26th pick in the first round for a discount then watching his front office work the phones manically and slide back to 29th and then 30th and lessening the initial cost each time.

So about 30 minutes after the end of the draft, Lacob was still revved up–way more revved up than GM Bob Myers, assistant GM Kirk Lacob and Mark Jackson at that late point:

Lacob had a blast. The big emphasis by Lacob and Myers: Their total front office was on fire last night, especially in the 10-20 minute period when they were making the three deals to get finally to the 30th pick, and a very low cost.

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To sum up: The Warriors pulled off a major coup by purchasing their way into the first for only $1.6M (which was all they were allowed to spend by league rules) and their 2014 second-round pick, something Lacob was delighted to say that he predicted earlier in the day… and that GM Bob Myers had said would not be enough.

And then the Warriors whittled the net cash cost down to $600,000 by moving back twice and still took Nemanja Nedovic, the Serbian guard they wanted.

Before I get to Myers’ breakdown, here’s some of the details…

* As the Warriors evaluated their position heading into the draft–no picks, liked Nedovic and one other player–they checked in with Nedovic’s agent to see how high they’d have to go to get him.

The agent told Myers that the highest he probably would go at that point was 31st to Cleveland, so the Warriors sought to jump in front of that.

* The Warriors’ front office called around, knew Minnesota had amassed three picks, already used two, and was unlikely to want to use a third.

Myers in particular pointed out scout Larry Harris’ relationship with Minnesota chief Flip Saunders, which helped the GSWs figure out what they had to do to get the pick and who else was interested in it if they wanted to start moving back down.

The Warriors gave up the $1.6M and took Malcolm Lee’s guaranteed $854k salary off the Timberwolves’ hands.

* The Warriors knew the Thunder had called Minnesota about No. 26, so they started talking to OKC and offering the pick.

They got $1M–an unbelievable take for the GSWs here, by the way–from OKC to move back from 26 to 29.

At 26, OKC took Colorado’s Andre Roberson, a player the Warriors were not interested in.

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* The Warriors knew they could go back a little bit more; somebody on staff had Phoenix on the phone, and the Suns were willing to take Lee’s contract if they could move up one slot to 29.

Phoenix took Kentucky’s Archie Goodwin there.

* The Warriors briefly thought of continuing to move back–it was fun!–but knew Cleveland probably was taking Nedovic if they didn’t, so they exhaled and grabbed Nedovic.

* Nedovic is still under contract with his Lithuanian team, but there is a buy-out. The Warriors can only provide a part of the money for any buy-out.

Myers said they will sit down with Nedovic and his agent and discuss the timing soon–whether he comes to the Warriors this season or next eason.

* I asked Lacob and Myers to come up with NBA comparables to Nedovic.

Myers said Goran Dragic.

Lacob said Jeremy Lin.

* Lacob said the Warriors had pinpointed one other player–higher in the first round–but couldn’t get up that high with what they had to offer.

Wild guesses: UCLA’s G Shabazz Muhammad, who went 14th and ended up in Minnesota, or C Lucus Nogueira from Brazil, who went 16th and ended up in Atlanta.

* The Warriors only had $1.6M to spend in a trade out of the total $3M allowed to teams per year because they spent a total of $1.4M in dumping Charles Jenkins and Jeremy Tyler at the last trade deadline to get under the luxury-tax line.

* I asked Lacob how far he could go into the luxury tax, and he said it wasn’t an issue. I asked: Can you go to $80M? His answer: “Sure.”
I’d think $76-78M might be the unofficial cut-off point, but you never know.

—–BOB MYERS partial press conference transcript/

-Q: Can you walk us through how this all happened–buying the 26th pick, and then the subsequent moves? Was Nedovic the target all along?
-MYERS: The draft, it’s very fluid, it’s very fast-paced. We identified a couple players that we thought we liked in the first, Nedovic being one of them. We had him ranked pretty high on our board.

As the draft proceeded and we saw the possibility to acquire the 26th pick for a value that we thought was good, we made a move to get it. I credit our group… not just myself… It was more watching how well our group orchestrated it–our assistant GMs Travis Schlenk, Kirk Lacob, the relationships we had with Minnesota–Larry Harris, one of our scouts is close to Flip Saunders, so…

It all happened very quickly, but one we were able to obtain that pick we then tried to move back a little bit, which we were successful doing, and get off some of the money we spent, and a player we actually took on.

So it all happened pretty quickly but we’re happy with the result.

-Q: What do you like about Nedovic?

-MYERS: We like a lot of things about him. We like his size. One of the things we like in all our players, one of the things we covet and value is size at your position.

And we think a 6-4 point guard that’s athletic and can attack the basket is a great asset. Those are some of the majors reasons why we like him.

We like his youth, he just turned 22. We like his decision-making. Played a lot in the pick and roll. I don’t know if people had a chance to see some of his highlights.

Attacks the rim. We’ve got a lot of great shooters on this team, that are very good at that; but we felt like we needed another player that can attack the rim, and he’s very good at that.

-Q: Do you expect he’ll make the team?

-MYERS: Oh, we think he’s going to make the team. I think we have no doubt that he’ll make this team.

When he’ll come over, we’ll have to look at that, work that out. He’s got a European contract, so that’ll be a negotiation with his European club.

But as far as talent goes, the ability to play in the NBA, he has it. How much opportunity he’ll get will depend on what kind of roster we go into the season with. But we have every expectation, whether it’s this year or next year, he’ll be on this team and a contributor at some point. That’s the hope.

-Q: When did you know you could get into the first round?

-MYERS: This was an interesting draft. It’s very unique and rare to be able to get a first-round pick without giving up a first-round pick or a player. I’d have to look back at the recent history…

But to get in the first round and get at 26 without giving up a future first or giving up a player is a unique opportunity. So we jumped at that opportunity and realized this was a rare moment to grab a first-round pick and we took it.

And we realized that probably halfway through the first round, about pick 15-16. What you do is you’re often looking at teams with multiple picks, and when Minnesota made the trade with Utah we saw that they then had 14, 21 and 26, and that’s a team that likely is looking to move one of those picks.

So we immediately got on the phone with them and we evaluated what the opportunities were to get 21, to get 26, and ultimately worked out a deal to get 26.

But it happened about the 18th or 17th pick that we acquired 26.

-Q: Why not get a big and fill a need? Did you like Nedovic that much or were you not that high on the bigs available?

-MYERS: We feel like we have a need also in a guard that can attack the rim. We feel like we still have a need at the big spot as well–we feel like we can fill that, hopefully, in free agency.

But we just felt like was a talent we couldn’t pass up. Like I said, size at his position, upside, youth…

We looked at some of the bigs to be fair.

I think when we evaluated the draft, the goal is to draft players that are big for their position, and we felt like he fit that mold. Size is paramount in this league and we’re trying to be a big team–big at each position.

We felt like Nedovic was a better talent than any of the bigs on the board as far as upside. And also a guy that attacks the rim at his position was something we felt we could use.

-Q: Does drafting a point guard/play-maker in any way affect what you might offer Jarrett Jack?

-MYERS: I don’t think this will affect the pursuit of Jack. I think we’ll pursue him with same vigilance we would have if we hadn’t made this pick.

We thought Jarrett Jack did a great job for us. And we’re going to attempt to resign him.

What we really thought here, one of the things that we talk about amongst our organization and Jerry West, one of the things that we hear him say often, is you have to acquire assets.

I think this organization over last two years has done a tremendous job of acquiring assets. Enough that we really could’ve gotten quite a few picks in this draft should we have chosen to do so.

We feel like as an organization we’ve assembled a team of young assets. And tonight we were able to add another one of those.

Those are the people and player sin the NBA that people covet the most, young talented assets. And that’s the model we believe in and the approach we follow and we think we added one of them tonight.

-Q: How crazy was that draft?

-MYERS: Every year it’s a lot of stress, it’s a lot of fun. But this was a different one. What could you glean from this draft? I’m not sure. Maybe people… there was a ton of movement, there was a lot of teams looking to make deals. A flurry of deals…

I was talking to one of our scouts about 15 minutes ago and he said, ‘You know what our group did a nice job of is you could not possibly have transacted all the things that we did without the help of our entire front office and scouting staff.’

If I was trying to do all these things by myself, we could not have done this, there was no chance.

I mean, we have two guys on the phone, whether it’s Travis on the phone with Minnesota, one of our scouts on the phone with Phoenix, as we make these things happen… Oklahoma City…

It’s a team effort and that’s the only way you accomplish what we accomplished, where you’re able to get a first-round pick for what we think is not a ton of cash and a future second. It’s just a very rare thing, but it was a group effort and a team effort.

-Q: When you go to 26, were you always going to move back? Who else were you considering there?

-MYERS: I’ll lay it out for you guys, ’cause this is an insight to what transpired…

We liked Nedovic when we got 26. But we felt we could maybe move back to get Nedovic. And this is why relationships matter and this is why teamwork matters.

When we were able to acquire 26, we looked at each other and said, ‘Should we try to move back?’ That’s what we talked about, maybe we don’t need to take Nedovic at 26.

So you get on the phone with his representative, because you know his representative, and you say, ‘Where do you think Nedovic is going?’ And he said we think he starts at 31. We think that’s where he starts.

So in our minds, we think we have a little bit of room to move back, and you have to trust who you’re talking to, and we did, because you have relationships. And we were told you can go as far back as 30.

So immediately we started working on what could we then get to move from 26 to 30? We got a good amount of financial relief, we got off a player that we had to take on.

In a matter of 15 minutes we were able to save the organization a good chunk of money and still get the player we wanted, and we were able to do that because we had the knowledge that the player we wanted would still be available.

And also we acted on the knowledge that the player we wanted might not be available after 30. We did hear, whether it’s true or not, there was a decent chance the player–Nedovic–might’ve gone with the next pick. You never know for sure, but a pretty good source.

Q: It was always Nedovic? Nobody else?

-MYERS: We had another guy as well, but once we got to 26, we were targeting Nedovic.

-Q: What was the total cost?

-MYERS: The net cost after everything was done was $600,000. And we also gave up a future second-round pick, which is in 2014. But there were two or three things that happened to reduce the net cost from a much larger number to get to $600,000.

I really credit our staff and the people in the room for exploring a lot of different idea.s We could’ve easily sat there, stayed at 26, having spent more money net, having taken on a player, and drafted Nedovic.

But because we have some pretty smart people in the room and very creative people, we said, why don’t we try to get off some of the money? Why don’t we try to get off the player that we acquired and still get Nedovic at 30?

And we were able to do that in a matter of 10-15 minutes. I’m sure everybody was sitting here, they got the 26th pick, now they got the 29th, what are these guys doing?

We’ve got some pretty smart people in a room that did a great job making all that happen.

-Q: One more year under contract in Europe?

-MYERS: He’s got a buy out. He could come this year if he were to negotiate out. It’s possible. We talked to him tonight–he’s a wonderful kid, speaks great English. Very excited to be drafted by our team, you could hear it in his voice. He’s in Belgrade right now.

Yeah, he could come now. It’ll be a negotiation, if he thinks it’s best for him and we do. It’s a little different than when we drafted Ongen last year–we knew full well he was going to stay over there.

This is a decision we’ll make in the near future with his representative and himself as to what’s best for him and for us.

-Q: Will Nedovic play in the Vegas Summer League? Will that have an impact on whether he comes this year?

-MYERS: We talked to his agent, we’re going to talk about about hopefully making that happen depending on his national team obligations.

It’ll depend on what he has to do over there. But our hope is to watch him in the summer league and hopefully we can make that happen. We’ll have more information on that in the next two-three days, hopefully.

-Q: Was he at Eurocamp in Treviso?

-MYERS: Yeah, he was in Treviso. Travis saw him, Kirk and I got their the next day, our European scout was there. He played well enough where he left, ironically, like a lot of guys do…

He’s a guy that we probably spent more time in our draft room over the last week watching film on him, studying him, than any other player in the draft. He’s a guy we felt fit a lot of our needs.

-Q: His numbers don’t look spectacular in the Euro leagues. How advanced do you think he is?

-MYERS: It’s hard to say because the European game very different, the amount of possessions you’re able to get. He’s a 22 year old playing against some pretty advanced players in age, played in some good Euro league games.

It’ll be different. The NBA game is different than the European game. You don’t see these eye-popping stats, whether it’s assists, points, rebounds… the Euro League, it’s not as fast-paced, not as many possessions.

We’re excited to see him. The things that jump out at us were his size, athleticism, the ability to get to the rim. Needs to work on his shooting, not a finished product.

I think a character trait we’re trying to build on this team is toughness. He’s got a brashness about him, he’s competitive. If you watched some film on him or able to, he’s fearless.

We actually got a text from one of the coaches, an NBA assistant coach that coached him in the Euro league, and told us great pick, I loved coaching this guy. He’s got a great attitude.

We have a lot of things to be excited about. But we want to get our hands on him, get him with our coaches, and get a better look at him before we start laying out what his future will be.

-Q: How confident are you that you can solidify your front court in free agency and trades?

-MYERS: I don’t know. I’ve been involved in 14-15 free agencies… a couple from this side, some from the other side. I’ve seen players get over paid, I’ve seen player get underpaid…

The one thing I learned was, whatever you usually think, you’re wrong. So you’re prepared for 10 different outcomes…

We’re confident and we did spend a lot of time on it this week, as we looked at the available 5s, the available 4s, we felt like there was enough of them, and the fact that we have a coach that people like to play for, we have an organization now that is viewed as a winner, we felt if it came down to a tie on some of the players we were going after, we could win that tie.

But it’s going to be tough. We’re going to have to work every relationship.

We’re not probably going to be the biggest spenders in free agency, so we’re going to have to work extra hard. We’re going to have to sell this organization, sell this team to prospective free agents and hope that somebody sees it as a fit.

-Q: How badly did you need get into this draft?

-MYERS: We were happy to not be in the draft. Obviously we have an ownership group that’s very aggressive. You don’t like just sitting and watching and bystanding.

I would describe what we did is we grasped an opportunity that we thought existed in getting the 26th pick.

It would almost be like watching the market and seeing a stock you like all of a sudden get to a price you didn’t think it was going to get to and you grab it.

I’ll just go back to the trade and the approach that we’re always working on and working towards, which is to grab an asset.

The best organizations have ways to find young assets and grab opportunities when they see them. So if we didn’t see this opportunity or the price to get the 26th pick was a future first or a player, we weren’t going to be in that game.

But when the price to grab the 26th pick was money that our owner was willing to spend and a future second-round pick that we hope is late next year, if all things go well, the team has a good record it will be a late second-round pick, we felt it was worth getting into this draft and grabbing the player we felt had the most value and the most upside for us.

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Big win for Warriors – by getting into the first round in 2013, the Warriors have the flexibility to trade their 2014 1st round pick in a blockbuster, per league rules, teams can’t trade away 1st round picks in consecutive years- it’s all about good players and the flexibility to get great players.

earl monroe

The question now is, do we trust the talent evaluation of the warriors on this pick, considering how badly the Thunder wanted Andre Roberson?
The Warriors had no interest at all in Andre Roberson?

Otis

The new intelligence of this Warrior’s front office is exhibited here: “We like his size. One of the things we like in all our players, one of the things we covet and value is size at your position.”

Yes, it’s not getting one big guy and undersized guys elsewhere. The fact that Klay at the two is 6’7, and Barnes at small forward can jump out of the gym and loves to rebound, means as much as having a rebounding center, and maybe more on defense. Gone are the days of watching Monta and Steph go up against Kobe, or Durant (remember watching Monta check Durant – like watching a fourth grader guard a sixth grader).

Otis

Earl Monrow,

I think they saw Roberson, knew they had Harrison Barnes, and went for the Serb.

citznkane1

TK: Be careful your obvious love of the new Warriors management doesn’t blind you to hard reporting. You write nice things now and the W’s give you all kinds of access to write nice stories about them. In contrast, your disdain of the Cohen administration was clear so you wrote very critical and insightful pieces which became the Bay Area’s ONLY deep critical reporting of the W’s while everyone else played “nice” with a bungling-comical sports administration. I hope you maintain your critical journalism during this new administration and not become their mouth piece or a cheer leading reporter. I wish you continued excellence in your coverage of the Warriors organization. The truth does set you free and make for excellent writing/reading.

Otis

Citznk – the fact Myers could get all these people on the phone at all is proof the Cohan – not Cohen – era is over. And the draft picks have been terrific so far. What investigative reporting do you imagine should have been happening about this front office? We had no picks going in to the draft and ended up with a promising pick, and gave up only the 50th – likely – pick in next years draft, which will likely be replaced if need be.

Spotting good moves is as much the territory of a goo journalist as spotting the crappy moves.

Bravo to Tim, but more so to Myers and West.

http://4points(five) jsl

Nice work, Tim; better work, Myers.

a42

TK blind to Warriors management? You mean TK, who still constantly clashes with Lacob about overvaluing DLee and his horrific contract? Slow down on the overreaction there.

These moves during the draft were simply aggressive winning gambles and TK is acknowledging that fact. As he often says, what part of “criticize when bad, praise when good” is so hard to understand?

ChuckDurn

Steve, getting into the 2013 draft yesterday was irrelevant in terms of impacting 2014. The rule of not trading #1 picks in 2 successive drafts is entirely future-based. As of today, it is irrelevant whether or not we had a pick yesterday, we can trade the 2014 #1 because we still have our #1 in 2015.

The rule is weird that way, but that’s how it’s written. The past is irrelevant, even 10 minutes in the past in this case.

KDP

I will be the first to admit that I am not the closest follower of all NBA draft moves. But I cannot recall an instance of a team making the multiple, informed, clever moves that this team made to grab what they consider a valuable asset. As Myers explains it, I think most teams would have high-fived themselves on their brilliance in securing the #26 pick at a reasonable cost, drafted the player they wanted, and called it an evening.

Any comparison of this group to anything having to do with the Cohan era is misguided, in my view. And please notice in the first paragraph that I only mentioned the work of the front office. The other factor is an owner (Lacob) that clearly trusts his people and will pony up the cash when they feel they have something good on their hands.

A cynic might say; “What about Jeremy Tyler? They spent $2 million on him and that hasn’t worked out all that spectacularly.” That would be a fair question. On the other hand, neither has that move hurt the team in any meaningful way. Lacob might be considered to be out a couple million bucks, which he appears to be fine with, but other than that there has been no significant detrimental impact.

Garlicboy

Earl Monroe,

Roberson looks like a nice 3/4 propect. Roberson could turn out to be a very good player, but Dubs have some pretty good young and developing 3/4 players in Draymond Green and Harrison Barnes.

Like Roberson, Nedovic is athletic with a high ceiling but unlike Roberson he fills a need on the Warriors roster.

Jscrilla

Cant help but feel a bit Tskitish about the pick. But any help in the second round can be seen as a Sabonis.

jason bourne

I hope Nedovic is able to play this year. Nice to hear the Ws are making moves such as this. It’s a far cry from the Cohan era where we had to hear Larry Riley say such things as, “amnesty…i mean, in all honesty, how important is that?” We could be in great shape to Dwight Howard if he decided to come here if Ws still had their amnesty.

Niners in 2012

“I think a character trait we’re trying to build on this team is toughness. He’s got a brashness about him, he’s competitive. If you watched some film on him or able to, he’s fearless.”

LOVE THIS

That Man

Buried because of the NBA finals, the news that Ezeli had knee surgery on his MCL and PCL is worrying. He is out for 6-9 months. Considering Bogut’s long term health problems, maybe the Warriors should have gone after a tough rebounder to shore up their front court this season. The Iranian big man from Oregon, Kazemi? He was deemed NBA ready. But hey, since Jerry West got there, they have made all the right decisions, so perhaps Nedovic will pan out. He does have some major hops.

Mitch

I think that they are going to make a serious play for Dwight Howard, which is why they didn’t go after a guy like Jeff Withey.

steve

I think Dwight Howards body is the right fit for the warriors, not sure about his head.

itsinthegame

forget howard. they will fill any big man needs with a one year deal. they are looking at clearing cap space for the strong ’14 free agent class. with beans and jeffersons’ big contracts coming off the books they can then go after needs. also they should be able to re sign bogut for fair value considering his injury history.

Neymar

@Mitch – I think drafting Jeff Withey would have absolutely nothing to do with acquiring Dwight Howard.

TL

Agree with #9 — it’s a nuance of the Stepien rule. No back-to-back FUTURE years, but once you’re past the actual draft, it doesn’t matter (so once we past 2013, if we still had our 2015, we could trade our 2014). Source: http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q85

But I like everything that Myers said. This cost the GSW $600k + a likely late 2nd rounder. Since 2nd round goes in order of W-L for team, if say the Warriors are the 12th best team in the league (they were 6th in West this year, and really probably higher than 12th overall, given how weak the East was), they’d be giving up something like the 48th-52nd pick. Small potatoes perhaps, for a guy who has an edge — seems exactly like “the secret” and West knows all about winners…

Hope they do shore up on a big — maybe Kuzmic (2nd rounder from last year) actually helps — have to see him in Summer League at least, and one stable free agent big. Then the W’s still look fairly solid. A little shaky with Ezeli out and Bogut always iffy, but nothing to scoff at either.